Third Graders Reflect About Legos

During the 3rd grade unit on Lego robotics, I challenged my students to reflect about what they have learned while building and programming the different projects. Each partnership keeps a journal where they record the building process, keep project explorations, write reflections, and answer questions about how each project they build works. They also use digital cameras to document their constructions.

Here are some reflections to the question "What did you learn by working on this project?" from Mrs. Hensler's class.

"As the projects get bigger, they get more complicated." - Quentin, Julian, JC

"We learned to work together as a group." - Hannah, Annie, Skyler

"We learned how gears work." - Cian, Jake, Chris

"We learned that compound machines are made up of simple machines." - Julia, Zara, Devyn

"We learned how to activate sensors and motors and how to fit gears together. We also learned TEAMWORK!" - Luke and JT

When building the dancing birds, "we learned the motor spins the first gear and that spins the pulley system for the second bird to move." - Lizzie, Anna, Isabella

This week the students will use the photos and journals to create ComicLife posters highlighting their work over the last few weeks.

 

Special University Visitors

Today I took a break from my typical Monday teaching schedule to welcome some visitors to Shorecrest. It was a privilege to tour Dr. Isa Jahnke from Umea University in Sweden and Dr. Swapna Kumar from the University of Florida through Lower Division and Early Childhood classrooms. The purpose of their visit, to observe how our teachers and students are using iPads to enhance teaching and learning.

There are many 1:1 initiatives currently being implemented throughout Scandinavia, and Dr. Jahnke is interested in learning how other countries introduce mobile technologies to teachers and students, as well as how schools support teachers in the implementation process. I spent time discussing Shorecrest's 5th-12th grade initiative for the 2013-2014 school year as well as our plans to integrate iPads with the younger students. I shared examples of apps that we are using as well as the different professional development opportunities, both formal and informal, that are taking place to help prepare teachers. We also discussed my role as an Instructional Technologist, a position not usually found in Scandinavian schools.

Here are some of the wonderful ways they observed teachers using iPads today.

Second graders in Mrs. McKenzie's class worked with partners to research individual species of penguins. Each partnership was asked to answer eight essential questions about their penguin as well as other interesting facts on a recording paper. Rather than searching independently on the Internet, students used a 'short cut app' created through Safari that took them directly to a site with pre-selected resources.

First graders worked in small groups with Mrs. Raumann to practice writing words families. Using a whiteboard application, they worked on spelling words with short vowel sounds as well as consonant blends. This activity also worked on the students fine motor skills as they practiced writing their words with only lower case letters.

The Junior Kindergarten teachers started the day by showing a YouTube video on the Seminoles of Florida. The students were able to see traditional dances along with clothing worn by the tribe. The iPads were then used to show other videos along with images to the children at their morning centers as they crushed fruits to make dye, created their own headdresses, and participated in other Native American related activities.

Kindergarten students worked with the application Monkey MathSchool Sunshine to reinforce math concepts such as shape, pattern, sequence, less/more, and counting sets.

Dr. Jahnke and Dr. Kumar were impressed with the overall program and work students were doing in the classrooms as well as the openness of the campus and classroom spaces. Of course, the students were wonderful about having visitors. After quick hellos, they would always get right back to work.